Illusive Men: New Mass Effect 2 Footage

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When I look deep into your eyes I can see your greatest desires. Don’t be afraid. Ah yes, I see it now. You want three more trailers with in-game content for next year’s Mass Effect 2. Well, hold my hand and join me beneath the jump where I have a little surprise for you.

Here’s a sneaky peak from what must be the opening, revealing that Shepard has been sleeping for quite a while. Also, the “Elusive Man” (really?) seems to be voiced by the lovechild of Martin Sheen and Casey Kasem (“I have a letter from a man in Austin, Texas, and here’s what he writes: Dear Mr President…”):

Then there’s a bunch of combat, showing off some really cool moves, and I think making it very clear how much it’s changed since the first game:

And this third video shows off a conversation, which doesn’t really reveal a great deal. But I do wonder why they don’t have any videos featuring the female Shepard.

mShep makes a perfectly fine Paragon, you know. All this talk of his VA being rubbish is exaggerated. He just voices most of the neutral dialogue in a monotone “I am a professional soldier” drone which sounds fine when you’re zooming around being a Paragon (makes you sound like you’ve got everything under control because you’re just that good), but breaks down as soon as you switch from “hello I am Shepard” to “WHERE IS THE BOMB I WILL KILL YOU AND NOW I AM MAKING AN ANGRYFACE” Renegade options.

Agreed, and that’s exactly how I’ve played it. My first play-through was with Paragon m-Shepard, and he just seemed like serious boy scout. Not bad at all though, and still above the voice acting standards of most games. I was impressed with the dialog and voices all around. I’m replaying it now as a Renegade f-Shepard, and I’m even more impressed.

Like others have said, it makes sense that they’re focusing on box-cover-guy for the promos, but it’d be crazy to take away female Shepard as an option – especially if they’re talking about continuing with your existing saved characters.

Male Shepherd’s Canadian accent definitely detracted from my enjoyment of the first game, it’s unfortunate to see it re-appear in Mass Effect 2.

Also, did the combat video remind anyone else of Deus Ex: Invisible War a little bit? The models in ME2 seem to have an “uncanny-valley” quality that I didn’t pick up on in the first game. Then again it might just be the console-y FoV or something.

Despite that, I did quite like the look of the “charging-through-the-terrain” power, and I don’t see anything here to change ME2 from a day-one purchase in my book.

Last I’d heard, Martin Sheen was indeed voicing the Elusive/Illusive/whatever Cerberus Dude Who Hides In The Shadows.

Also, I don’t see why femShep and Jennifer Hale wouldn’t be in this, they just haven’t shown any of her stuff yet. There’d be little point to letting you continue your save from the first game if they didn’t let you play with one of the two characters.

I admire a writer who can just say “ah to hell with it” and give a character as generic a name as he deserves. Professor Morton Soulless is another good one.
Any bets on what the “ripped from the headlines” one-act side-quest will be? I think it’ll be on Space-Bankers and their Space-Bonuses.

ME was the first RPG I have played with a somewhat detailed physical character creation system where my creation felt like the REAL Sheppard. I’ve always thought my characters were obviously just some mess that I created myself. If someone walked in and saw my character they would assume I made it, but if they saw my version of Sheppard they would assume he just came with the game. Others here seem to have had a similar response to the system.

I’ll definitely be creating a new character for ME2 though, and it will be a girl. I don’t know why I have been playing games with male avatars for so long. No big deal if it is first person, but if I’m going to be staring at their backside for 40+ hours….

Looks alright for the most part but then i’ve never been a fan of pew-pew lasers and spaceships. I remember the first Mass Effect being a good few days worth of timesink, even if it was not totally memorable.

Have they said whether or not the boring, height-mapped worlds will be getting a revamp? While I admit I did enjoy a good romp in the Mako whilst blasting pirates and geth from a great distance, the boring and often times ugly non-story worlds turned me off of ME at times. Especially that god forsaken moon with the derange biotic cultists. I mean you couldn’t throw in some trees or lakes? They all just seemed like different colors of the same ugly, mountainous terrain.

Well, anyway I loved the original ME, and ME2 only looks to be better than it’s predecessor. Granted the name “elusive man” is a little on the lame side, but Martin Sheen immediately makes up for that. Although I’m not so sure how I feel about the removal of the medi-gel in favor of a regenerative health scheme, granted you could obtain armor mods that did the same thing in ME, but having it straight from the get go seems kinda like another appeal to the casual gamers who have a hard time taking cover and playing slowly. Sort of like the new heat sink ejection system, god forbid you fire in bursts and not like a wild chimp.

Regardless it looks very promising, and those new abilities and animations looks spectacular.

Oh and one last thing that did bother me about ME was that every time I tried to make a custom character, he always ended up looking Asian, any attempts to make him appear Caucasian ended up with him looking like an elderly Asian gentlemen who managed to survive a horrific bleaching accident.

They’ve said they’re putting more effort into the sidequests this time, so hopefully that means less worlds that look procedurally generated and more realistic ones. Combat changes don’t bother me one way or the other; I’m one of the few who actually enjoyed combat in the original (even if the stupidity of your squadmates sometimes grated) but I don’t think the changes will ruin it. The only thing that concerns me is the X-TREME vibe I’m getting from the marketing, but I’m putting that down to advertisers and assuming the game will come through.

Oh, and on the Asian Shepherd, I gave him a full beard and it solved that problem :D

They’ve claimed that the side-quest worlds have been revamped and will now be much more interesting and unique, not just the same wasteland landscape leading into the same base/cave/mine with different enemies.

I am really trying to get into ME but the interminable cut-scenes, screeds of pointless text to read and occasional clunky combat is sending me to sleep (and the consol styliings set my teeth on edge). I can’t yet find any actual *game* underneath the very pretty interactive made for-TV sci-fi. How far through does it turn into an actual game?

You should give up. Besides combat, those were my favorite parts. The combat was ok. I really did play it as an interactive Sci-Fi movie where I could control the amount of exposition. I went heavy on that myself since I found the alien races and world pretty interesting. But as a pure “game” I guess it was pretty “meh”. As a whole entertainment product it really has been one of my favorite games. Can’t wait for ME2.

It basically doesn’t. It opens up a bit and lets you choose where to go and what to do to a limited extent, but in reality it’s still entirely comprised of cut-scenes, expository dialogue, and combat. There’s nothing else there. I thought it was alright for one play through, but can’t imagine going through all that again.

Yeah, even the Dragon Age stuff that was just snippets of gameplay, like the character introduction videos were still horribly misleading, as they crammed way too much of the wrong stuff into one quick burst of promotional material.

The ‘Meet Zevran’ video they released a couple of weeks before release was cringeworthy. Zevran in-game? Hilarious. So if they’ve managed to screw things up equally badly for the Mass Effect 2 advertising, then we might well have a gem on our hands.

I had quite a few gripes about Mass Effect 1, but Dragon Age showed me that Bioware haven’t lost their old touch. If they can do that again with ME2, I’ll be buying it pretty close to launch.

Glad NPC’s are now able to walk and do stuff during conversations, instead of saying a sentence, performing an action during an odd pause and then continuing to talk. And I really love the fast talking aliens.

Why dont they release a video walkthrough of the entire game then we dont have to buy it.

I dont like loads of videos of singleplayer games, i want some surprises to be left for when i actually play it. Not ‘oh i remember this bit from the vids i kill this lot then a big robot comes and i have to kill that’.

Theyve already got my money because of the first game, and the fact that they all live in bungalows now